The shuttle ride back to the Normandy seemed to go on forever. Shepard had stabilized Ashley as best she could with medi-gel and her limited first aid skills, but the unconscious marine required more help than the commander could provide. Ashley needed Doctor Chakwas' care and there was nothing Shepard could do to get her back to the Normandy any faster. Instead, she was left to brood over the mystery of her doppelganger and her devastating failure on Thessia.
Beside her, Liara brought her hand to rest on Shepard's knee, but the asari's touch didn't bring its usual comfort. "What have I done, Liara?", the Spectre asked distantly. "I let her get away."
"You did what you thought best." Liara couldn't remember the last time she had seen her bondmate so low and her concern was pushing aside her own grief at the invasion of her homeworld.
The Spectre shook her head angrily, pulling her leg away from Liara's hand. "No, I didn't. When I saw Ash go down, I just reacted. I didn't think straight and now the VI is gone along with our best chance to locate the Catalyst."
"We will find another way." Liara had to believe that, but more importantly, she needed Shepard to believe it, to not give in to her fears. Right then though, her lover barely seemed to hear her.
"Javik keeps telling me that my feelings for the people around me make me weak. I didn't want to believe him, but maybe he was right." She buried her face in her hands. "Maybe I can only get through this if I stop caring."
Liara could hardly believe what she was hearing. "That cannot be right," she implored her. "Shepard, I love you, let me help you." The asari reached out again, craving the reassurance of the human's touch, but her bondmate brushed her hand away.
The commander desperately wanted to say yes, to reach out and hold the asari, but in the depths of her despair, she didn't know how. "No," She choked out, "Liara, I love you too, but I can't fail like that again. I just can't let myself be weak. I may have already lost the war trying to save Ashley. If it was you in danger…"
"Shepard," the asari stammered, her already-wounded heart breaking into pieces, "You cannot mean…"
The Spectre turned away, unable to face her bondmate, knowing that if she did, what she saw in those lovely blue eyes would be her undoing. "I don't know what I mean. Just… just leave me alone right now. I need to figure things out."
Normally, Samantha Traynor didn't go to meet the away team when it returned from missions. Her place was at her comm terminal, doing her duty. Not this time, though. After she'd relayed the message to the med-bay telling Doctor Chakwas that Ashley was in critical condition, she hadn't been able to restrain herself from joining the doctor in the shuttle bay.
The war had nearly driven Samantha to madness. Everything that she'd taken for granted had been stripped away from her, her comfortable life replaced with horror and fear and the end of one world after another at the hands of monsters she could barely comprehend. To stay sane, she'd tried to focus on the small pleasures she could still find: chess, Kepesh-Yakshi, and more than anything else, her unlikely friendship with Ashley Williams. It had started out as a small crush on the striking lieutenant commander, but since then it had become something more.
Maybe. Some days, Sam was convinced that the Spectre was uninterested in anything beyond a little conversation, but others… She could swear there'd been moments when she saw real desire in the way that Ashley's dark eyes looked at her. Usually, Samantha wouldn't be timid about finding out the truth. She'd been a teenager the last time she wasted her days mooning over some girl that might be straight. Now, though, in the midst of all this chaos and death, she didn't feel like she could afford to risk what she had with Ashley and so she said nothing.
Either way, not knowing if Ashley returned her interest wasn't soothing the horrible, gut-wrenching fear Samantha felt as she hovered at the edges of the docking bay, watching anxiously as the shuttle landed. The door lifted open, Doctor Chakwas and an orderly hurried on board, and when they reemerged, Sam gasped at what she saw.
Ashley was unconscious, her breathing shallow and her armor stripped off, leaving the Spectre clad only in a blood-soaked uniform. When Sam tried to get a closer look, Doctor Chakwas waved her off, but she did give the specialist a few words of reassurance. "Don't worry," she told her in that grandmotherly voice that made her so easy to trust, "She's in good hands."
After the medical team left, Shepard and Liara disembarked from the shuttle covered in blood and grime, but at least theirs seemed to belong to other people, or things. The darkness in Shepard's expression warned Sam away from talking to her, so she tried the asari instead. "Liara," she asked, "Ashley… How bad is it?"
"I do not know." Bloody hell but the asari sounded tired. Tired and sad. "But it is serious." The two women staggered towards the elevator together, but they were barely looking at each other. Sam had never seen Shepard and Liara like that and even without being told, she knew that Ashley's injuries weren't the only way that the mission had gone badly.
Liara sat alone in her quarters, trying to fight back the tears that threatened to blur the screen in front of her. Despite her exhaustion, she couldn't sleep, couldn't do anything other than force herself to keep working. If she did, she knew that the last bits of self-control that she had tried to fence around her grief would collapse, and her along with them.
Her homeworld, the place she had grown up, the cradle of her people's civilization and history had fallen to the Reapers. Her mother had hidden the truth about the asari's history from Liara, letting her put her faith in a lie. The Prothean VI, their best hope to find the Catalyst and put an end to this nightmare, was lost to Cerberus. And Shepard, the one person she had thought she could rely on in her darkest moments, had pushed Liara away.
The only small solace the Shadow Broker could find was that Ashley was going to live. Doctor Chakwas had managed to stabilize the Spectre's condition, but in the face of everything else, even that knowledge provided only a little comfort that night.
Behind her, she heard a knock on her door. "This is not really a good time," she said wearily. She had already sent Tali away when the quarian came to see her an hour earlier. She simply did not have the strength for anyone's well-meaning questions or sympathetic looks.
"It's me, Liara." Shepard never knocked, knowing she always had permission to enter her bondmate's chambers, but right then, it didn't feel right to walk in uninvited. "I've been thinking. I need to talk to you."
"If you are going to tell me that you cannot afford our relationship right now, there is no need. I have already heard all that I care to on that score." The harshness in her own voice surprised Liara, but the day's events had left her nerves too ragged to disguise the hurt she felt.
"No, that's not it," Shepard pleaded. "Just let me in." The desperation in the Spectre's voice softened Liara's anger and she opened the door. The commander had showered and changed into a clean uniform, but otherwise she looked dreadful. The human's eyes were red from crying and her weary face looked far older than her 34 years, the stress that had been building for months on the verge of overwhelming her.
"Shepard," the asari started, worry for the woman she loved making it hard to remember anything else, "Are you all right?"
"I can't do it, Liara," the Spectre said by way of reply, her voice weak, choked with emotion. "I can't do this without you. Maybe I should be able to, but I can't." For hours, she'd been trying to work, to think of some way to go forward after their defeat on Thessia but to no avail. Time and again, her thoughts had kept dragging themselves guiltily back to Liara, to the way she had hurt her, to the grief she must be feeling, and Shepard had realized she only had one choice. "Can you forgive me?"
Liara collapsed into the Spectre's arms, unable to find the words to answer. This last emotional turn was simply too much for the Shadow Broker and all she could do was sob against her bondmate's chest. "I'm so sorry," Shepard told her, her hand caressing the back of Liara's crest. "You made me strong when Cerberus tried to destroy my sanity. I should have remembered that. It was only… I was just…"
"I know," Liara whispered, finding her voice, "What happened today, it affected you."
"I'll make it right," Shepard promised her, "I don't know how, but I'll think of some way to win this war if it's the last thing I do."
"Later," Liara told her, clutching the Spectre tightly while kissing along her pale neck. "Now, I just need you."
Shepard bent down and caught Liara's dark lips with her own, her tongue sliding into the asari's mouth. Her bondmate whimpered and Shepard pulled her closer, Liara's warmth starting to soothe her frayed nerves. She had been fooling herself if she thought she could give the asari up, but that was something she could draw strength from, could use to help her finish this war.
Liara's hands fumbled with the commander's uniform, trying to remove any barrier between them. Shepard responded in kind, pulling off Liara's coat before moving on to the rest of her clothes. It all became a blur, one garment after another joining the growing pile on the floor, until Shepard's naked skin was pressed against Liara's own. The asari ran her hands over her bondmate's strong body, tracing the powerful muscles, now wound tight with tension. "I can't lose you again," she told the human, stroking her fingers over the swell of her lover's breasts. "I already did once and it almost destroyed me."
"You won't," Shepard replied, a guilty look passing over her freckled face.
Against her thigh, the asari could feel that her commander was still semi-soft, her mind distracted by all that had happened. She reached down, and Shepard felt warm fingers wrap around her length. She gasped into her bondmate's shoulder, feeling her cock start to stiffen against Liara's palm. The commander massaged the tips of her beloved's crest, and when Liara's knees started to buckle at even that simple pleasure, Shepard realized just how deep her lover's need went that night.
She was hard by then, Liara's thumb brushing over the head of her cock while her fingers kept massaging the stiff shaft. Shepard kissed her bondmate firmly, murmuring with pleasure at Liara's touch before wrapping the asari up in her arms and bringing her towards the bed in the back of the suite. She lay the Shadow Broker down on the bed, and though it was narrower than her own, that suited Shepard just fine at the moment. She climbed on top of Liara, wanting as much contact as she could manage, and the asari obliged, her hands wrapping around her lover and pulling her close.
The weight of Shepard's body on top of her comforted Liara even as her touch was driving the asari wild. The Spectre's mouth was nibbling along her neck, her fingers massaging her breasts, her cock rubbing over Liara's slick azure. Her fingers dug into Shepard's back, hard enough to leave marks. She couldn't believe how strong her body's response was, as if it was trying to replace everything else she'd been feeling with pleasure. The head of Shepard's cock was rubbing over her clit and every time it did, fresh wetness would coat the underside of the shaft.
"Shepard," she gasped, "Please." She wasn't even sure exactly what she was asking for, but the Spectre seemed to figure it out, shifting the angle of her hips so that the tip of her cock could more fully stimulate her swollen bud. Liara let out a little whimper of delight at the sensation and as she threw back her head, the Spectre bent down, her mouth closing suddenly over a hard blue nipple and suckling firmly on it. The unexpected addition of sensation was too much. The orgasm rushed out of Liara like a thunderbolt and as it did, her mind reached out instinctively for Shepard, needing to share her pleasure with the woman who had given it to her.
Liara's thoughts hit her out of nowhere but Shepard didn't even consider refusing her entry. She needed every part of the asari, and as their minds melted together, the throbbing pleasure in Liara's body jumped over to her. Combined with the mental stimulation, even the touch of her cock on the outside of Liara's sex was enough to push her over the brink into orgasm along with her bondmate.
The Shadow Broker felt Shepard explode against her, the Spectre's cock spurting shot after shot of clear fluid along her stomach, leaving warm, sticky trails all the way up to the swell of her breasts. Her own empty azure fluttered in sympathy, the shared pleasure intense but not enough to satisfy her desire to feel her lover inside her, filling her.
"Shepard," she panted as the meld started to weaken, "I… I should have asked before I tried to…"
"Don't apologize," the Spectre reassured her, "I love affecting you that way. You're always welcome in my head."
"Take me," Liara pleaded, knowing that her lover's stamina wasn't exhausted yet, "Now."
Shepard was only too happy to oblige her, pulling back her hips and lining her cock up with her bondmate's azure. Liara so was so wet that the Spectre slid into her lover with a single long stroke, the asari's inner walls almost pulling her in. The skin beneath Shepard was slick with her own release, but she didn't care about that. Liara was already deepening the meld once again and those shared sensations were all she could think about. The raw need in her bondmate's mind drove her wild and she tried to give the asari everything she needed. Shepard craved it too; the wet heat of Liara wrapped around her, the vicarious sense of fullness in her lover's azure, the reminder of a real, living connection amidst all the death and horror giving her something to hold on to.
"I love you," she reminded her lover across the bond, "Always."
"Until the end of world," the asari whispered back. "Longer." Her hands clutched at Shepard's firm ass, pulling her in as deeply as she could go, even while her mouth nibbled at the commander's ear.
The first climax hadn't satisfied Shepard's desires as much as it unleashed them and as she drove hard and fast into Liara, she could tell she would finish again soon. As best she could, she fought to hold back her orgasm, but when she heard, "Please, just come with me," whispered in her thoughts, she gave up the struggle. A few more strong thrusts were all it took before she peaked, filling her beloved asari's azure's, Liara's inner walls rippling around her as she shared in their bliss, trying to take all that Shepard had to give her.
Even after the final few drops of Shepard's release had spilled into her and the last of hers had begun to dry on the Spectre's groin, Liara couldn't bring herself to break the connection between them. For a long time, she just lay beneath her beloved, their hands caressing their still-sensitive bodies, Shepard's presence in her mind comforting her. When it finally did drift away though, her head felt clear. Her grief and troubles weren't gone, but they didn't feel so overwhelming anymore either and she sighed with relief.
"Are you all right?", Shepard asked, her green eyes lighter now too, the mind behind them working once more.
"Yes," Liara purred gratefully, "Thanks to you."
"Well, that's good," the Spectre smiled, "Because I've got an idea for how we're going to save the galaxy."
"Is that so?" Liara couldn't resist grinning back at her bondmate. "That was fast work."
"Well, I don't know how to find the Catalyst just yet, but I think I know who may be able to tell us about the bitch who stole Prothean VI." Liara looked quizzically at Shepard and she explained, "We're going to go pay an old friend a visit."